Singer Autumn chooses Scottish Rite for music video

Autumn Boukadakis is Disney pop star pretty. Except at 28, she’s slightly older than the teeny bopper norm. On Tuesday, the Austin singer and songwriter and crew of about 20 came downtown to shoot a video for her just-released single “Rain Down.” Location: the circa-1922 Scottish Rite Cathedral, 308 Avenue E, a block north of the Alamo.

When I walked in at 3 p.m., Autumn was seated at-the-ready at a shiny black piano centered in the Scottish Rite’s grand ballroom. She wore a white cocktail dress with black trim. Her hair was pinned back while a few loose strands framed her face.

The crew was all around her. Grips adjusted several really big lights. They studied Autumn in the light and consulted with the director and the production coordinator before tweaking the light some more. Hair and makeup did their thing. The director of photography dissected the scene through the camera’s monitor while sitting on the dolly the camera was mounted on.

Jen Hoover touches up Autumn.

The ballroom itself is circa 1922 and its wooden floor is so polished it mirrors anything on it.

To the naked eye, in the context of all of the equipment and lights and crew, the scene looked like in real life. But when viewed through the director’s sleek monitor the picture got fairy tale-like and cinematic and in HD  the ballroom’s baby chandeliers brilliantly reflecting off the piano’s propped lid. On camera, Autumn was the star. Second billing, it seemed, went to the Scottish Rite.

“We saw the pics (of the Scottish Rite) and said, ‘That’s it! We have to do it there’,” Autumn said. “It’s like this great space and there’s a cool history to it.”

Besides the ballroom, the crew filmed in the building’s parlor, theater and foyer. The Scottish Rite might be the city’s most filmed building with credits including feature films “All the Pretty Horses” (2000) and “The Newton Boys” (1997).

It wasn’t a long trip for Autumn, who has lived in Austin for nine years. She attended UT-Austin and earned her degree in classical piano. Her musical tastes on record are country and Americana, but she still holds an affinity for Beethoven, Chopin and Debussy.

“I still take piano lessons,” she said, adding that she’d like to make a classical EP “just for fun.”

In the meantime, she’s touring and promoting “Rain Down” (soon to be released on Triple A Radio) and its album “Velvet Sky.” She tours with Walt Wilkins (who produced the record) and the Mystiqueros (also from Austin), but the closest to San Antonio the group has ever performed is Gruene Hall.

The only drawback to checking out a music video for most of the day: As unfamiliar to Autumn as I was, by the time the shoot wrapped up at 11 p.m., “Rain Down” had successfully been implanted in my head.